Vibe coding a task manager

This is the core problem with all productivity software: you’re renting someone else’s vision of how work should happen… So I decided to build exactly what I needed: daily planning like Intend, but with integrated future task management, and none of the philosophical baggage (some of which may be great for others, but didn’t mesh with me!). A tool that adapts to me, not the other way around.

Being able to build bespoke software, on an as needed basis, is a change I’d never have predicted. There exists so much possibility in creating tools for one-off use. Does this scale? No. But it allows creatives to tinker and play and scratch their own itch.

On my /now page I have a little word counter. It’s a WordPress plugin for a single user—myself. It solves the problem I needed, and I used ChatGPT to help me write it. My main issue was wanting to remove any quotes from the word count. I’m not 100% sure it works at all times, but it’s good enough or my use case.

In the future I see scenarios like this for so many tiny tools that solve specific problems. Taking the task manager example I don’t see most of us building our own todo apps, but there could be cases where I want to build something more useful than a spreadsheet, but can’t find something off-the-shelf for my needs.

Via Jason Snell via Mike Masnick.